Letter to the editor

Dear HCN, Your article on the Sierra Club’s zero-cow initiative (HCN, 2/26/01: ‘Zero-Cow’ initiative splits Sierra Club), as with so many pieces that HCN does related to grazing issues, once again misrepresents the issues by trying to create a black and white – either/or – situation. The article portrays the Sierra Club’s zero-grazing initiative as […]

Dear HCN, I’m writing in response to the article “Zero-Cow initiative splits Sierra Club” (HCN, 2/26/01: ‘Zero-Cow’ initiative splits Sierra Club). Before I left New Mexico to pursue a graduate degree, I worked for several academic, nongovernmental, and federal entities as a field biologist. This work took me all over the Southwest, and to my […]

Dear HCN, I don’t really want to quarrel with the main argument of Allen Best’s essay, “The mythic West and the billionaire” (HCN, 2/26/01: The mythic West and the billionaire), but I think two observations concerning Thomas Moran might complicate it a bit. In the first place, Best is simply wrong in his assertion that […]

Dear HCN, It’s time to remind you and indirectly Jon Margolis that sentence fragments are not particularly convincing or fun to read and that a comma is not a semicolon. From “The power of love, and its opposite”: “At the cost of a political firestorm that a politically shaky administration can ill afford.” Isn’t the […]

Dear HCN, The other day I touched snow for the first time since 1995, when my wife and I fled the snow, ice and cold of Colorado after 50 years of residency. We moved to Southern California, where we could view the cursed stuff only on mountains far in the distance. A pickup truck just […]

Dear HCN, As a forester for 20-odd years and as a follower of HCN’s coverage of Western resource issues, I still hold out hope for improvements in the effectiveness and acceptability of public resource stewardship, despite the ongoing media and propaganda warfare. Overall, I agree with a minority of HCN’s slants on things, disagree with […]

Dear HCN, I read Ed Marston’s article, titled “Bush administration faces a reborn Interior,” and got a funny feeling in my stomach. I believe Ed is way off base believing the Bush administration will not succeed in using the so-called “reborn Interior” as the typical exploiters’ treasure trove. I see no evidence from the choices […]

Dear HCN, In his Bulletin Board story on the BLM’s OHV Strategy (HCN, 1/29/01: Agency will try to track trails), Matt Jenkins wrote that the Strategy “will now include … possibly even human-powered vehicles like mountain bikes.” It’s important to note that BLM chose to not include bicycling in its OHV Strategy. BLM’s decision came […]

Dear HCN, Jon Margolis has my hackles up again. In his article about weirdness in Washington, D.C. (HCN, 1/29/01: Weirdness abounds in Washington), I expected comments on Clinton paying off like a broken slot machine for “rich” patrons, or the Clintons registering for gifts (before her confirmation) so the payola would beat the ethics deadline […]

Dear HCN, I thoroughly enjoyed your essay, “Rearranging the grid” (HCN, 1/29/01: Rearranging the grid), as I do most of what you write. I have become a little jaded at the stridence of environmental writing today, the constant inferences that, indeed, the sky is falling. After 77 years, I know better. Your graphic description of […]

Dear HCN, Ed Marston believes that a reborn Department of Interior under Bruce Babbitt has led America out of the darkness of greedy natural resource extraction interests and into the warm sunlight of enlightened environmentalism

Dear HCN, Idaho Indian tribes won a long culture war when a legislative committee recently agreed to strike the word “squaw” from the map. But the tribes’ victory doesn’t let anglers off the hook. What are we to call the fish formerly known as squaw? A while back, state and federal agencies agreed to call […]

Dear HCN, This letter is in response to Greg Hanscom’s article, “Road Block” (HCN, 12/4/00: Road Block). Back in December 1999, during a Christmas visit to my hometown of Albuquerque, I took a drive to the east side of the city and found yet another subdivision in the once empty Elena Gallegos Land Grant. I […]

Dear HCN, We greatly appreciated the article by Mark Matthews, “Last chance for the whitebark pine” (HCN, 12/4/00: Last chance for the whitebark pine), which described the widespread decline of the once abundant high-elevation whitebark pine ecosystem in the Northwestern United States and Southwestern Canada. The losses result from the combination of introduced disease (white […]

Dear HCN, Paul Larmer makes two fundamental errors in the second paragraph of his article (HCN, 1/29/01: Power on the loose). California deregulation didn’t “require” that power companies sell off their power generation; it just made it attractive to do so in the short term, and shortsighted utilities did just that. However, other utilities, notably […]

Dear HCN, I enjoy your paper most of the time, but Ed Marston’s essay, “Rearranging the Grid,” struck an especially deep chord (HCN, 1/29/01: Rearranging the Grid). As his long, persistent efforts on the DMEA board have taught him, it may be in the trenches at the heart of our Western civilization that the battle […]

Dear HCN, “Troubled harvest,” your Dec. 18 lament over an immigration policy that doesn’t encourage immigration, reads like a plea for “wise use.” A population that grew more than 13 percent in the 1990s – the fastest growth rate among the industrial nations – exacerbates virtually all of the environmental problems covered so well by […]

Dear HCN, As one of the designated bad guys in Greg Hanscom’s reprise of Milagro Beanfield War (HCN, 12/4/00: Road block), I guess I should be thankful that the Valley Improvement Association came out looking no worse than it did … and stay quietly holed up in my “airy offices” (in a 30-year-old converted shopping […]

Dear HCN, I’m sure environmentalists are ready to declare the Sagebrush Rebellion over now that People for the USA is closing its doors (HCN, 12/18/00: People for the USA! disbands). Sierra Clubber Bruce Hamilton couldn’t resist one last distortion, telling HCN readers that PFUSA went about “buying rural representatives.” Hamilton also pointed out that “Corporate […]

Dear HCN, Edwin Dobb (HCN, 12/18/00: Still here: Can humans help other species defy extinction?) argues that we must accept our alienation from nature and, out of humane compassion, take endangered species into our adopting hands. His philosophy of “natural representation,” while perhaps inspiring some individuals to protect wildlife, would be disastrous for the conservation […]